“It’s as good a guess as any. The psychology certainly fits. They’d treat it as a messiah. The only group of people who’d keep quiet about it, if it asked. Which prompts the question “How did it find them?”
New London’s southern hub crater was a kilometre wide and three hundred metres deep, the walls perfectly flat. It had been cut out by the mining machines; the electron-compression devices had all been detonated at the northern end.
Anastasia glided over the rim and its picket ring of radars. The floor below was a near solid disk of metal, massive circular bearings in the centre supported the two-hundred-metre-diameter spindle, outside that were tanks, lift rails, observation galleries, airlocks, three concentric rings of lights illuminating the rim walls, bulky incomprehensible machinery.
Anastasia’s reaction-control thrusters fired. Greg’s visual orientation began to alter as the spaceplane turned. The crater floor tilted up slowly to become a wall, the rim wall shifted to a valley floor curving up to the vertical and beyond. There was another sequence of drumbeat bursts from the reaction-control thrusters as the pilot changed Anastasia’s attitude again.
Greg heard the unmistakable metallic rumbling of the undercarriage lowering. The crater wall curved up out of sight in front of Anastasia’s nose; it was moving, he could see a strip of small white lights running round the circumference, New London’s rotation carried them down the windscreen and under the spaceplane. To Greg it looked as if Anastasia was flying low above a smooth rock plain.
There was a final burst from the reaction-control thrusters, and Anastasia began to descend. It was like touching down on a runway, the difference being Anastasia was stationary and the crater rim was moving. They landed with a gentle bump. Electric motors accelerated Anastasia’s undercarriage bogies, chasing New London’s rotation.
Suzi’s jaws were clamped shut, her cheeks very pale, staring rigidly ahead. Greg could feel the spaceplane racing forward, yet their speed relative to the rim was visibly slowing. The starfield and spindle began to turn.
“Down and matched,” the pilot announced.
Greg started to register the low gravity field. Blood was draining from his face, that annoying fluid puffiness abating.
Anastasia taxied towards the circular wall of metal and a waiting airlock.
They came out of the airlock tube into a rock-walled reception room. Greg walked carefully in the low gravity field, very conscious of inertia, each step carried him a metre and a half.
New London’s Governor was waiting for him, flanked by two assistants. A tall, spare man who smiled expectantly, holding out his hand. Greg stared, frantically trying to place a name to the distantly familiar face.
“Greg Mandel, good to see you again. It’s been over fifteen years, yes?”
Now the memory came back. Sean Francis, one of Event Horizon’s younger generation of executives, a disturbingly ambitious one, if memory served. He was also superbly efficient, and keen, giving his total attention to every problem and request, no detail was too small to be reviewed. It was an attitude Greg had enjoyed the first time he’d met him, Sean Francis in person inspired confidence. Then after five minutes’ exposure, the unrelenting effusiveness began to grate.
Greg shook his hand. “Seventeen years, would you believe? Seems like you’ve done all right for yourself. I’m surprised Event Horizon let you go.”
Sean Francis grinned brightly. “I haven’t left. I’m just on sabbatical. You see, the English Government had to have a trained executive who was also completely conversant with the space industry in the hot seat, so Julia Evans loaned me out. Simple, yes?”
“Yeah.” Even after all this time Julia’s political expediency still never failed to gain his admiration. New London might be a Crown Colony on paper, but in realpolitik it was hers, and no messing.
Sean Francis introduced his assistants. The man was Lloyd McDonald, an Afro-Caribbean, one of Victor’s people, whose job description was New London’s corporate security chief. Greg suspected his responsibility extended further than that, given the administrative hierarchy. The woman was Michele Waddington, the Governor’s secretary. Another on secondment from Event Horizon.
We’ve prepared a barracks facility for your team in the security quarters,” Lloyd McDonald told Melvyn. “My people will take your gear down to it.”
“Fine,” Melvyn said.
“Are you anticipating trouble?” Sean asked.
“There is a possibility,” Greg admitted. “I’d like Lloyd McDonald here to step up his screening procedures for new arrivals. In particular for a man called Leol Reiger. He’s a tekmerc, very dangerous. And he might just be stupid enough to try and follow us up here.”
“Reviewing visitors is the responsibility of the Immigration office,” Sean said. “But I can have company security personnel deputized as backup, that’s within my brief.” He turned to Michele Waddington. “Get the authorization lined up, please.”
“Yes, sir.” She entered an order in her cybofax.
“Got a profile of Reiger?” Lloyd McDonald asked.
Greg held up his cybofax, and squirted the data over to McDonald’s. The security chief glanced at it. “There are three more flights scheduled for today. I’ll make sure the passengers are isolated and identified before they’re allowed into the colony.”
“If Reiger does come up he won’t be alone,” Melvyn said. “Make sure your people are armed.”
“Anything else?” Sean asked.
Greg looked at Melvyn, who shook his head.
“Just somewhere for us to get changed,” Greg said. “We’ll start hunting after that.”
“Certainly,” Sean said. “I’ve had some rooms prepared in the Governor’s Residence for you.”
“I’ll see my team to their barracks then join you,” Melvyn said.
“Right, bring a couple of them back with you,” Greg said.
“Carrying, but nothing heavy, the Tokarevs will do.”
“Sure thing.”
Greg picked up his flight bag and followed Sean into a circular lift, along with Charlotte, Suzi, Rick, and Michele Waddington. It started to descend slowly, Greg’s feet nearly left the floor. Gravity built steadily.
The doors opened on to another smooth tunnel carved through the living rock, a pair of moving walkways ran down the middle, two broad biolum strips were fixed to the ceiling, brighter than usual. Gravity felt normal. Greg looked along it, expecting to see it curve up out of sight, but there was a corner about eighty metres away, and another one behind him. The floor might have been slightly curved, it was hard to tell.
They took a walkway down to the corner, then another one. The layout reminded Greg of the Prezda arcology, people slotted neatly into regulated accommodation space. Hive mentality.
There was a policeman sitting behind a metal desk outside the door to the Governor’s Residence. He stood and saluted as Sean showed his card to the door.
The Governor’s Residence changed Greg’s mind about conformity. The interior seemed to have been lifted straight out of some eighteenth-century colonial trader’s mansion, a formal European layout, with modern Asian and Oriental furnishings. The rooms were spacious and airy, with high ceilings and white walls, pillars and arches dominated the architecture. He wondered how much it cost to lift all the wood up from Earth.
Suzi stood on the parquet floor of the hall, and whistled appreciatively. “Not half bad. You pay rent?”
“No, this is my official residence. It comes with the job. The King and Queen have slept here, and the PM.”
“No shit? Now us.” She nudged Greg playfully.
“Tell me about the Celestial Apostles,” he asked as Sean led them up the stairs to a broad landing.
Sean put on an unconvincing smile. “Bunch of religious nuts, mostly; though some technical types threw in with them. Their creed decrees space as the turning point in human destiny. No specifics, surprise surprise. Just generalities; space will save us, expand our spiritual horiz
on. Same kind of crap most loony cults spout. The main difference is that the leadership don’t live off the acolytes. By all accounts they’re quite genuine in their belief. They all live in the disused tunnels and empty storage chambers. I wouldn’t call them dangerous, exactly; but personally I’d just as soon send the police and security teams into the tunnels to round them up and deport them, yes? I mean, what happens in a real emergency situation, a pressure loss? Or an epidemic, how would they get vaccinated? I’d have to risk my people trying to help them. But of course they never consider that.”
“So why don’t you?” Greg asked.
“The police do catch a few. But Julia Evans says let them be, no big trawling operation. It’s not as if we’d drain the Colony’s police budget.”
Greg gave Suzi a satisfied grin, he’d known that kind of sentimentality was one of Julia’s traits. Suzi just rolled her eyes.
The bedroom was decorated in red and gold, with ornate hardwood marquetry furniture. Painted fabric screens had been used to partition off the bathroom and jacuzzi with forest scenes, black backgrounds with tall spindly trees, pale leaves. Metal-framed French windows opened out on a balcony with iron railings, a row of potted ferns was lined up along the front edge.
Greg dropped his flight bag on the bed, and pushed the windows open. Hyde Cavern’s air was warm, humid, ozone rich, and smelt of fresh blossom. He was looking out over a small deep valley, with a blunt dark massif of rock blocking the far end. A slim tubular sun blazed with blue-white virulency overhead, its glare haze blocking out any sight of what lay behind it. He followed the sides of the valley as they rose upwards, curving in like two giant green waves about to topple. If he used his hand to shield his eyes from the tubular sun, he could just make out the landscape directly above.
By then he was ready for the impossible sight. He’d been intellectually prepared for it, of course, but ground as sky was still a dismaying sight. The physical mass, pressing down.
He wasn’t quite sure what to call the involuntary phobic shudder running down his back, but it seemed as though the little cylindrical worldlet was about to constrict, crushing him at the centre.
He dropped his gaze again. The first four out of the five kilometres between him and the other endcap was lush green parkland. Hyde Cavern’s rock floor had been shaped with gentle undulations, silver streams meandered through the coombs, low waterfalls feeding calm lakes. There were copses of young saplings, tree-lined avenues of yellow pebbles wandered like serpents across the grass. White Hellenistic buildings were dotted about, each at the centre of its own garden. They were the focus of New London’s social life-theatres, restaurants, clubs, pubs, reception halls, churches, two sports amphitheatres. People didn’t live out in the Cavern, groundspace was too valuable; instead the lower fifth of the southern endcap housed the warren of living quarters, offices, light engineering factories, and hotels.
The last kilometre of Hyde Cavern was filled with the miniature sea, a band of salt water running round the foot of the northern endcap, its parkside coast wrinkled with secluded coves and broad beaches of white sand. Tiny islands studded the middle of the sea, covered by a dense shaggy thatch of vegetation. Just looking at it made Greg want to run over and dive in.
He gripped the balcony rail and peered over. They were about twenty metres above a broad rock roadway running round the base of the endcap; people in light clothes strolled about idly, the far side was a bicycle lane, nests of café tables with bright parasols sprawled out directly below him. Balconies stretched away on either side, vines with huge heart-shaped leaves twining round the iron support columns, long mauve flower clusters formed a fringe above his head, bunches of green grapes dangled on either side. He picked one; it tasted sweet, succulent, and seedless.
Suzi, Rick, and Charlotte had come out of the bedroom to join him. And even Suzi was quiet as she looked round.
“Where were you when you met the Celestial priest?” he asked Charlotte. The girl hadn’t put ten words together since they’d lifted off from Listoel. Her thought currents were tightly wound, slow but deliberate, there was a lot of concern and guilt accumulating inside her skull.
She frowned lightly, searching the shoreline. “There.” She pointed to a point high up on the right-hand curve. “It’s the fall-surf beach near the Kenton station.”
“Ah, tourist zone,” Sean said. “The beaches round there all have bars and sunbeds, game pits, that kind of thing. It’s popular with the younger ones.” He smiled at Charlotte.
“Do the Celestial Apostles often try recruiting there?” Greg asked.
“They vary. Routine would trap them, yes? But they do tend to prefer the tourist zones.”
Greg turned his back on the distracting vista of Hyde Cavern, gathering his thoughts. “OK, I want every available policeman assigned to foot patrol. Have them cover the kind of public areas the Celestials frequent. I’m looking for any kind of activity by the Celestials, recruiting, picking the fruit, whatever. Specifically, they’re to look out for older male Celestials. If they see anything they’re to report in, but under no circumstances apprehend. The last thing I want now is for them to go to ground.”
“All right,” Sean said. “It’ll take a while to organize.”
“No problem, but I want it started this afternoon. We’ll take a look ourselves in a little while.”
“I’d like something to eat, please,” Charlotte said.
“Good idea,” Greg said. “We’ll get changed, have a bite.” He checked his watch. “Meet back here in an hour, half-past three. OK?”
“Yes, thank you.” Charlotte gave him a quick courteous smile.
“I’ll have the cook rustle something up for you,” Sean said.
“Send Melvyn Ambler and Lloyd McDonald straight in when they arrive,” Greg said. “And Charlotte.” She looked round, eyes wide and sad. “Don’t go anywhere without your hardline guard. You’re the single most important person on New London right now.”
He got a brief flustered nod.
“I’ll show you your room,” Michele Waddington said, opening the door.
Suzi winked. “I’ll stick with her till the hardliners arrive.”
“Fine, thanks Suzi.” He ran his hands back through his hair, it was sweaty and tangled after four hours of that tightfitting cap.
The jacuzzi came on at his voice command, and he began to take off the hot shipsuit.
CHAPTER 30
As soon as Royan shimmered through the protective programs Julia had thrown round her processor implant she could tell he was excited, face all tight and bright.
Snowy, how’s it going?
Not good. I’ve got you mucking about with microbes. Event Horizon is under threat from superior technology. My hold over the New Consetvatives is slipping. Greg’s off chasing after an alien. And Victor’s furious with you for hiding this personality package in Kiley’s ‘ware. He had to go out to the Farm in person.
Some of his infuriating bonhomie faded, the image turning translucent for an instant as the features reshaped themselves into a more serious attitude. His sympathetic expression offered concern.
That was him all the way through, knowing exactly which buttons to press. And she always bloody let him.
I’m sorry, Snowy. Truth to tell, I’m surprised you needed to access this package at all. It’s been going so well, really. I was right about the microbes, they are the greatest discovery since America, since… the wheel. God, Snowy, they’re magnificent. Truly. They’re going to make you mine again, Snowy. They’ll bring us back together. Equals and lovers. He gave her a lopsided smile. Fated, it’s written in the stars.
Once he’d been able to make her smile and dance and blush with his romanticism. Fifteen years ago, when the peace of a beachside bungalow and whole days spent making love were more important than anything. When just the touch of him lit a fire in her blood.
The only thing I see in the stars these days is how much New London has cost me, in red figures a th
ousand kilometres high. And only mental cripples leading Mild lives believe in astrology, as you so often told me. Now what the bloody hell have you been doing? Have you stitched that space plant together yet?
There was no movement in the pixels that composed his face, no show of hurt, which just made it worse. Julia responded with her own front of stubbornness, refusing to be bullied.
I discovered something about the microbe genetics, Royan said. Did my earlier recordings tell you about the inner toroid shells being inert?
Yes.
Well, I did a bit more work on them. A second project, alongside my asteroid dissemination plant. I was curious that only the outer shell contained active gene toroids; so I removed the outer shell from one sphere, and used the remainder as the basis of a clone.
You did what?
Cloned it.
His image dissolved. The cell which replaced him was a sac of white shadows, foggy inside. It reminded her of a flaccid jellyfish. The nucleus was a dark ovoid core at the centre, surrounded by a snowstorm of white organdies.
Her perception point drifted through the cell wall, carrying her up to the nucleus. She stopped just outside, observing the internal structure through a smoky membrane which gave everything a rusty tint. At the heart of the nucleus was the sphere of alien chromosomes. She felt like a small child pressed up against a shop window, complacent and dreamy.
I used an ordinary moss cell as a base, Royan said. I removed its terrestrial DNA, and replaced it with the modified alien gene sphere. I studied the sphere’s reproduction process, it’s very similar to DNA replication. Cell division starts with a generation of ring-like threads, chromonemata equivalents, which anneal to the toroids, facilitating duplication; then the two sets of toroids are split apart and regroup at separate ends of the cell, ready for the fusion.
Chrome-black rings tumbled through the nucleus, swooping towards the toroid sphere. They began to cluster over the surface, dropping down sharply to mate with a toroid. A fuzz of molecules began to build round each one. The outer shell of the gene sphere split into thirteen crescent segments, and opened like a flower. Rings started to fall in towards the second shell. The process was repeated with each of the shells, accelerating with each layer. As the shell segments continued to unfold the nucleus membrane dissolved, allowing them to spread through the cell like the wings of a dark bird.
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